Assassin's creed syndicate is, in many ways, a call back to the series roots. Many of its gameplay elements feel reminiscent of some of the earlier and more successful games in the franchise, and it's certainly shown signs of improvement over its more recent predecessors. Despite its many improvements though, Syndicate is still a flawed game. While various issues regarding the newer iterations of the series have been remedied, these changes have given rise to new problems that make Syndicate an enjoyable game on the surface, but one that often shows issues beyond its face value.
One of the most striking issues presented in Syndicate from the start are its issues with story telling. The story of Syndicate is, while at times entertaining, ultimately disjointed and flawed, losing track of its ultimate goal in favor of presenting various interesting situations. Beyond this, Syndicate also boasts one of the worst paced stories that I've ever had the misfortune to witness in a game. Characters seem to make decisions on a moments notice, with no apparent motivation behind their decisions, Upon arriving in London, for example, the character of Jacob immediately decides to start a gang, much to the disapproval of his sister, only for her to change her mind and approve of his idea with little to no coaxing or reason. Underneath all of this chaos is the game's modern day meta narrative, which has become a jumbled and nearly incomprehensible mess over recent years. With all of these errors, it's difficult to even remember a bright spot in the story of Syndicate, and for one who is a long time fan of the series like I am, it's flaws are even more apparent and egregious.
The gameplay of Syndicate on the other hand is, for the most part, genuinely enjoyable. The stealth system introduced in Unity has been almost completely overhauled, and makes stealth a far more entertaining and useful part of the game. Sneaking into a heavily guarded facility or assassinating a target is extremely satisfying, and new mechanics make stealth a great way to play. Another new addition to the series is that of carriages, providing new ways to get around the city, and while it's clear that Ubisoft put a lot of effort into making the carriages as functional and practical as they could be, I often found them restrictive and boring, with controls often being unresponsive and me more often than not being run over by my own carriage upon getting out.
Yet another system that has seen significant change from Unity is the games updated movement system. As introduced in Unity, the newer movement system is designed to be more like that of games like AC 2 and Brotherhood, and aims to give the player more control. And while I can confidently say that the movement system has seen some much needed improvement from Unity, it still requires a significant amount of work before it can be deemed fully functional. The strange controls often felt disjointed and delayed, with me issuing an order that would only be carried out after a complex series of unnecessarily convoluted animations had played, and imprecise controls and fixed movement points frequently got me detected or killed without reason.
The movement system has also been enhanced with the addition of the rope launcher, which functions as an Arkham-esque grapple gun, which allows you to easily scale buildings and cross areas that would ordinarily take longer to move through. Unfortunately, this feature feels more like a crutch than an enhancement to the game, essentially making one of the games trademark features, climbing, completely void, and though the argument can be made that you don't have to use it, the game often forces you into situations where it must be used to achieve specific mission parameters and complete objectives.
Among the more notable changes to the game overall though is its new combat system. With the more complex system of blocks and parries featured in Unity seemingly completely gone, Syndicate has created a new system that uses simple combat mechanics to fight enemies. Though this system may seem interesting at first, the routine it presents soon becomes stale. Kill animations repeat themselves over and over, and though the game attempts to introduce different enemy types, each attacker is handled with almost the same formula of controls.
The combat of Syndicate is also the most button-mashy that the series has ever seen. Each fight sees you more or less jamming the attack button as quickly as you can, only occasionally stopping to block or break a defense. After most battles, my thumb was actually throbbing from how much I had pressed the button, and any time a game causes you pain there's probably something wrong with it. As flawed as it was, the combat system in unity actually showed far more promise. Though it may have needed major refinement, the system in Unity required you to actively wait for opponents to let their guard down in a back and forth dance that was as delicate as it was tense. Perhaps if Ubisoft had kept and refined the system, Syndicate's combat would have felt better, not being a jumbled mess of button mashing and stale animations.
Regardless of these flaws, the game's mission and reward systems, while showing some flaws, are generally entertaining. Syndicate's story sees you teaming up with various historical icons of the time, such as Charles Darwin and Karl Marx, in order to fulfill various tasks that each assigns you. These missions, while somewhat short and few, provide interesting and fun retreats from the London underbelly. Charles Dickens will often task you with hunting down and debunking various paranormal phenomenon, while Darwin may have you rescue one of his incoming fossils to further his theory of evolution. It's short but sweet side stories like these that provide the more enjoyable plot based entertainment in Syndicate, and these missions are some of the best aspects of the game.
Alongside these more structured missions are the borough takeover missions, which task you with performing assassinations and kidnappings in order to further your gang's control over London. All of these mission types , excluding the rather boring kidnapping missions, are extremely enjoyable, and allow for some more slightly open ended types of gameplay to reach your goals. These missions reward you with various upgrades to your inventory, which is quite vast and interesting, but suffers from a lack of variety with only 3 weapon types to choose from compared to the larger arsenals of the previous games.
Perhaps one of the biggest flaws in Syndicate's progression system however is in its leveling and perk tree. The game's choice to split the narrative and gameplay between two protagonists, while an interesting one, often causes more harm than good. Perks are roughly the same for each character, excluding a few character exclusive perks at the higher levels, but each character has their own set of points to spend on perks, often unnecessarily complicating the system, causing me to wonder why the game doesn't just have one solid protagonist, rather than forcing me to switch my attention between the two.
Though it may be flawed, Assassin's Creed: Syndicate is still an enjoyable game. With a much smoother launch than that of its predecessor, and various improvements to its formula, the game takes many steps in the right direction, but creates almost as many problems as it fixes, and while these problems are many and very evident throughout the game, it's still a genuinely enjoyable experience that, while being far from great, will likely be entertaining to both the new comer and series veteran alike.